When the third armored car finally died from a nervous burst of Diss's powers, it was, fortunately, due to excitement within walking distance of the border. The two approached the camp, with a pair of guards following behind... but stopped at the outer fence. "Okay. So far your power seems to range from just a meter or so out to make a hundred when you get overly excited. I want you to stay here with these guys... Hey, guns still work?"
One of the men looked a bit hesitant... "Sir, generally not supposed to just..." He looked at Diss. "...Cover your ears, miss." The two soldiers already had ear protectors in; the kind of nice, modern-day ones that could amplify quiet sounds, and muffle loud ones. When she backed away and covered her ears, he gave a single test shot into a nearby mass of mud.. and nodded. "Still works, sir."
"So she doesn't kill guns. Good to know. Stay here, Diss. Don't tell anybody whats going on."
She nodded a bit fearfully, and sat down on a large rock not far from the fence-line, as Spike marched through the gate; still wearing his classic armored black DMA uniform; though, amusingly enough, he'd used a bit of gel to spike his hair up the way he had back when he and Desiree had been dating.
Men saluted, a few cheered, and they directed him to Bates's tent without question. Bates looked up at his entry. "About damn time! Valkyrie and the Lord of Iron have been out there doing the heaviest lifting, we need our own Titan to show them what for."
Spike grinned as he stepped up; and took Bates's hand, shaking it. "Sorry, general. Ever since the Eyeball incident I've stopped flying... and I got an important piece of intelligence from one of our Olympian friends."
Bates backed up a step. The general hadn't trusted the Olympians since the day he joined the service. They hadn't had an official relationship with the US since Hiroshima... and had declared they would not do so until the US gave up all nuclear arms. Despite this, they continued to have relations with other nuclear powers; except for the Russians, after one of their nuclear tests had harmed its neighbors with the fallout. "..And what exactly would that be?"
"They led me to a young woman with the power to dismantle machines just by focusing on them. Unregistered, been accidentally destroying cell phones, cars, cash registers... anything that runs on electricity or light just... pop. When she actually tries, or gets emotional, the range gets bigger; I've got her outside the fence or she might have taken out a good chunk of the camp just being nervous. My ex girlfriend, amusingly enough."
Bates gave a slow nod. "Well now. That could be useful. What sort of range does she have?"
"Not sure. She's been able to target over a hundred meters away with complete effectiveness. Don't want to go -too- far because we might take out something important."
"Well damn. We'll get her amped up, get her a few energy drinks, and find her, I dunno. A horse. Or an old diesel tractor, or something she can ride. Certainly be worth having around, though not sure if its worth the delay getting you here."
Spike chuckled. "Oh, worth more than the delay. I also stopped to pickup something... special." He searched around in a pocket... then held up a small green glass cylinder. "This... is Boost. An experimental drug that amplifies the powers of certain metas dramatically. Obviously it can't work on all metas, but if Apollo's information is accurate.. we can dose her up with this, get her to go all-out... and she might just wipe out the entire country worth of machines in one fell swoop."
He grimaced. "And, well. Every car, cell phone, computer, and electronic device in the country. Better than an EMP. Leave all the people alive, but it'll take years to recover."
Bates wend dead calm, staring at him. "Some sort of one-trick magic show, end this whole bloody war that has already cost us thousands of lives and millions in equipment... with one syringe and this girl in the right spot?"
"Precisely. Just need a delivery system so I can get her to the heart of mexico safely. Preferably something that can carry my weight as well."
".... I need to make a few phone calls."
***
Tai floated just a few meters off the ground; his aura of flame a brilliant, intense thing; his hearing muffled by what seemed to be a constant roar of a jet engine emerging from his body as he carefully controlled himself, sliding forward. The ground was red-hot beneath him; trees were igniting half a mile before he even came into contact, and when he left, the ground itself was glowing red-hot. The request form his leaders... not to stop, as he'd feared... but to go lower, and even more intense.. was welcome.
They'd even stopped to measure heat below the surface, ensuring that he was doing enough to kill the machines; for the survival of the Middle Kingdom, they were making sure their weapon was performing properly. And right now, he was glad to be that weapon. Up ahead, he could see a town... well, no. A city, though not a vast metropolis like Shanghai. This one was wide, spread out... and he could see people running, fleeing, in the distance.
No matter. He had work to do. He would keep progressing north until the entire country was gone; and if need be, he'd keep going until he reached the arctic. Though... this was so slow. Inefficient. If he got even hotter, he could melt the entire country, all at once... He started to increase the heat. He was so caught up in his own movement, feeling out just how hot he could go without doing something crazy like igniting the atmosphere, he didn't notice what was happening around him.
***
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A few kilometers behind Tai, a squad of Chinese soldiers were using a high-density scanning device; essentially a glorified high-powered metal detector; and sweeping the areas that Tai had passed over; planting flags and GPS markers anywhere they found anything for a later team to use a better scanner, and make sure anything that was buried was appropriately inert. They'd been keeping well back; avoiding the stones and other objects that retained heat long after Tai's passing, and slowly forced to get further and further behind, despite dozens of teams working, due to the seemingly infinite heat Tai could generate...
Suddenly, one of the closer teams let out a series of agonized screams over the radio.. and went silent. Alert for a possible machine ambush, the men dropped behind a nearby boulder for cover; one soldier brushing too close, and letting out a hiss of pain as the rock burned him through his uniform.
He glanced up over his shoulder, scanning the area for threats.. and then looked up at Tai. He... couldn't see the man. The heat had grown so intense, so bright, it hurt his eyes just to look at, like a miniature sun. It just felt so...
He collapsed shortly after, as Tai continued floating onwards; the path of destruction only growing in depth and width as he moved.
Overhead, the Chinese space station; covertly armed, of course, and ready to intervene if needed; took measurements of the temperature, and its impacts... relaying information directly to high command back in Beijing.
***
"At the current rate of temperature increase, we expect global devastation within twenty-four hours. If instead he continues at his current temperature, each hour will cause an increase in global temperature that.. well. More northern, or southern, countries may survive, but anything close to the equator will become unlivable if he's allowed to finish this work of burning the entire country; which, his current speed, will take several days."
Xi sat at the table with the technician, nodding. "Of course. Will this solely effect the american continents, or how badly will it impact our own?"
"Simply allowing him to continue will, short-term, cause a record heat-wave in the americas, the failure of the overwhelming majority of crops in both south and north america immediately, and probably millions of heat-stroke deaths. By the time our own harvest season arrives, it will have spread across the world and... frankly, unless a fairly substantial farming network can be setup in northern canada and siberia in a very short time-period, global famine and the ultimate death of most of humanity. We can ameliorate this by building a substantial network of hydroponics facilities, and by making immediate bulk food purchases before other nations realize the danger."
He shook his head, sadly. "So, we need to stop him. Unfortunate. Determine the best timing to inflict optimal damage on our competition while still allowing our crops to be viable, and issue the command to stop him at that point. Use our station's armament, in conjunction with ground-based equipment, to ensure success. Whatever you need is authorized. "
"...Of course, sir. This may call for the use of tactical nuclear devices, sir."
"So be it. We cannot fight the machines if we have all died of starvation. And one more thing."
"Sir?"
"Make sure we can blame it on the machines. And don't warn me.. I want to be genuinely surprised when it happens."
***
"Alright, people, we're moving out. The heroes are heading off to the east, and moving further south into mexico. We're going to be heading south along the peninsula til we hit the coast... then checking out the islands."
Eyeball grinned at the collection of villains and mercenaries joining him outside the camp. "I think they're getting sick of the villains making them all look bad, and want to push us off to the side, they think they have a handle on this. Except for the Lord of Iron; they brought him along. Still .Lets go! We're clearing everything from here to San Felipe!"
The villains loaded up; some into their own, custom vehicles; one or two lunatics had absurd, animal-themed vehicles; the Shark-Mobile notably was, like its driver, fully capable of operating underwater; though from what he'd seen of one of the man's heists, he had to seal up the engine before going under, then unseal it after coming out.
Oddly enough, he could see the Lord of Iron's new statue being loaded up onto a train. Obviously he'd be able to get the tracks fixed, but why would he want to? If he ran off ahead of the rest too far, he'd be surrounded and killed, no matter how deadly he was.
Didn't matter. Eyeball rode atop a Humvee, riding south, sweeping the desert for machines to destroy; fairly relaxed about the whole process. When they started to approach the next village, he tapped the radio; the Humvee, rather than his helmet one. "All stop! All stop!" The formation came to a halt in a cloud of dust, sending it drifting forward.
"Okay, I can't see who it was now, but one of you was about to nail a cactus head-on, and the bloody thing has a bomb on it. I need you to.. Shit, Reverse, reverse!"
Of course, it was too late. He could do something about his own vehicle in time, but he couldn't force the others to pull back fast enough. As the group approached the edges of town, he pulled out the breach-cam shell again; rather than sending drones forward to sweep and giving away what they knew, he'd scan it like... well, fuck.
As he was distracted scanning the town, another humvee went up; the others paradoxically, accelerating as if that would somehow help, and ignoring his shouted warnings...as the group came under fire; the same cold, precise fire to be expected from the machines, as well as random scattered shots from the Pale Ones.
The group was in chaos; the soldiers being yelled at by Eyeball, by their own superiors. The saving grace of the assault was the nature of its members. Villains. Mostly loner sorts, who were more comfortable moving out and killing on their own. As the soldiers halted or pulled back for cover, two bestial mutants; one with a more shark-like form, the other simply an enormous monster of muscle and bone at least ten feet tall; charged into the village; absorbing gunfire with seemingly no concern as they crushed every machine they came across.
With the machines turning to focus on the closer threats... the Shark-man unfortunately losing a leg to a burster grenade in a dismaying splatter of blood and bone fragments that sent him crawling behind a nearby car for cover... some of the more ordinary-seeming villains with rifles, armor, or simply ranged assault powers, were more free to take them down, squad by squad.
Eyeball himself used the 20mm machinegun mounted to the Humvee to devastating effect; holding his 40mm revolver in one hand, aimed upwards so he could see what the breach camera would show him if it penetrated whatever structure he aimed at, he fired bursts of HMG fire through the walls into machines; some of the men nearby thought he was simply spraying fire at random until they started seeing broken machines through the holes he left behind.
Despite the initial hiccups at the edge of town, they rolled through the village without a problem; the machines had set a simple ambush, with a large group of machines and pale ones, a set of explosive mines they could remote trigger... and nothing else. No scattered forces hiding in the village, unless there was another underground base, and nothing hidden among the civilians; so far, at least, the machines were trying to avoid civilian casualties... a strange thing, compared to the human side willing to lose them to kill more machines.